Working with the briefcase
Briefcase actions are only available in the user levels Advanced and Expert. If necessary, choose one of these user levels via to be able to use the briefcase.
In order to have a folder synchronized with your local computer, a link to this folder must be put into the briefcase:
•
Select 
in the action menu of a folder or workspace in order to have this folder or
workspace synchronized with your local computer. The folder itself remains
unchanged at its original location. You cannot put single documents into the
briefcase, but only entire folders.
• You
can also put several folders into the briefcase by first selecting these folders
and then clicking 
in the multi-selection toolbar.
To remove a folder from the briefcase and consequently exclude it from synchronization,
• open the briefcase, e.g. by selecting in the top menu and
•
select
in the action menu of the folder concerned.
The BSCW briefcase has a local counterpart, the local briefcase folder on your local computer. After successful synchronization, the local briefcase contains the same documents and folders as the briefcase on the BSCW server. The location of this local briefcase folder and some other options concerning synchronization are specified as follows:
• Select in the top menu bar.
• Go to the ‘File Handling’ subsection of the section ‘General’ of the action form.
• In the ‘Synchronization via briefcase’ box, enter the (changed) location of the Local briefcase folder as a path in the local file system into the respective field.
• Check the option transfer document versions into case to also have the versions of versioned BSCW documents transferred to your local briefcase folder. The versions of a document docname will be placed into a subfolder docname.versions of the local briefcase folder. Note that by default only up to three of the latest versions of a document are transferred. If you are not happy with this restriction, contact your system administrator. If this option is not activated, only the current version of a versioned BSCW document is transferred to the local briefcase folder during synchronization.
• Check the option expand document names by default extension to have document names expanded by standard file extensions when transferred to the local briefcase folder. A BSCW document docname of file type ‘Adobe PDF’, e.g., will be transferred to the local briefcase as docname.pdf.
You need not create the folder for the local briefcase; it will be created automatically during the first synchronization.
Note: When you change the location of the local briefcase via as described above, the old briefcase folder will not be taken into account when the next synchronization takes place, and documents changed in the old briefcase will not be transferred to the BSCW server. To prevent any loss of data you should change the path to the local briefcase folder only after a successful synchronization. You may want to delete the old briefcase folder from your local computer. During the next synchronization, the new local briefcase folder will be created.
In order to synchronize the contents of the briefcase with your local computer, you proceed as follows:
• Open the briefcase, e.g. by selecting in the top menu.
•
Select
in the context menu of your briefcase. Alternatively, you may click the 
icon in the shortcut bar.
• A new window opens for carrying out the synchronization. The changes in the local system and in BSCW are calculated and shown in a preview titled ‘Changes’; a progress bar in the lower left-hand corner indicates the progress of the calculation process.
• You
may now select the folders you want to synchronize. The column ‘Action’ shows
for each folder, whether changes are to be transferred from the local PC to BSCW
(
) or the other way round (
) or whether changes are to be
transferred in both directions (
).
A click on a particular folder shows the respective changes in detail (in the
‘Info’ box at the bottom). Click on the action icon of a folder line, to
restrict or skip synchronization altogether (
) for this folder using the respective
drop-down menu.
• Hit [OK] to start the synchronization process. Depending on the amount of data stored in the briefcase and the number of changes in documents, the synchronization may take some minutes. Please wait until the progress bar has reached 100%.
• When the synchronization has been completed, a list of the folders and documents which have been transferred is shown. The following icons are used:
Information about
an action carried out during synchronization.
Warning about an action
carried out during synchronization.
An error occurred during
synchronization.
A
document has been transferred from the BSCW server to the local briefcase
folder.
A
document has been transferred from the local briefcase to the BSCW server.
A synchronization conflict has
been detected (a document may have been versioned in BSCW).
• You may then close the window by using the button provided.
During synchronization, documents may be transferred from the BSCW server to the local briefcase folder and vice versa from the local computer to the BSCW server. The following has to be taken into account:
o Only folders and documents are synchronized, other BSCW objects such as notes, calendars or URLs are not.
o Documents and folders in the BSCW briefcase, which are not present in the local briefcase yet, will be transferred to the local briefcase.
o Documents and folders created in the local briefcase are uploaded to the according workspace in the BSCW briefcase during the next synchronization (subject to access control).
o You must not create documents
or folders at top level in the local briefcase, but only within the already
existing folders. New top level folders must first be created in your BSCW
briefcase using
.
Otherwise you will get an error during synchronization.
o Documents and folders, which have been deleted within the BSCW system are deleted from the local briefcase during synchronization (given they have not been edited locally). This also holds when documents or folders have been renamed within BSCW.
o Documents from the BSCW briefcase which are already available in the local briefcase, but have not been changed there, are transferred to the local briefcase if they have been changed on the BSCW server since the last synchronization.
o Documents from the local briefcase, which have been edited locally, are transferred to the corresponding folder in the BSCW briefcase. An already existing document on the BSCW server is processed as follows:
o The document will be replaced if it is not under version control and has not been changed in BSCW.
o A new version will be created if the document is already under version control.
o If the document has been changed also in BSCW (conflict), a new document version will be created. If necessary, the document is put under version control first; the local document with its changes is uploaded to BSCW as the new version with an according version comment. Such conflicts are also indicated in the result list.
To resolve a conflict, you must decide which document change has priority. If the change in BSCW has priority, you should delete the last document version in BSCW (this is the one from the local briefcase) and also delete the document from the local briefcase to prevent another conflict. If the change on your local computer has priority, no action is necessary in BSCW (the document changed locally corresponds to the current version on BSCW). To avoid conflicts you should lock documents in your BSCW briefcase if you plan to edit them locally.